Modelling Cork Bases

I've been pretty smitten with cork bases lately.  They make easy, natural looking rock formations in a pinch and cork is cheap and easy to find.  Here is a little walk through of how I use cork (particularly on small and medium based models).

The cork comes in a pack with 2 sheets of it purchased from Daiso (2 dollar store).  They have varying sizes but I chose the thickest one I could find for some nice elevation with my figs.

I began by ripping a chunk of cork from the sheet with my fingers.  For smaller models this is very doable and looks more natural and random than using a knife.  If you really want to use a knife to cut the pieces you can just rip small chunks off the edges later with your fingers instead.  I super glue the cork directly to the base.  It has enough surface area that the glue by itself will suffice without any need for pinning.

It's okay and actually encouraged to go over the lip of the base.  In my opinion it creates more of a surrounding atmosphere to the model; you can easily imagine the rocky, uneven terrain in the figure's environs.  This admittedly sometimes conflicts with practicality and ease of playing a game from time to time.

The next stage is prepping your figure.  It may be common knowledge to some, but a good trick is using the hunk of metal designed to fit into a slotted base as your ally!  Simply cut off the majority of the metal tag but leave a little 'peg' attached to either or both of the figure's legs.  These will act as your pins without needing to fool around with an annoying and time consuming drill.

After you've created your handy pin, test-fit the model on the cork.  It's important to choose a piece of cork that will have enough surface area on the top to position both of the figure's legs securely.  Once you've chosen a suitable location for the fig, use a hobby knife to 'dig' holes in the cork where the model's pins will slide into.

I think the rest is self explanatory though I love stating the obvious:  super glue the figure onto the cork using your crafty pin and laugh as all your attempts to destroy and uproot your figure from its base are futile!

Here's the completed unit:

Drexoll League Tournament Battle Report Write Up

On Sunday November 24th, 2013 I attended a Warmachine and Hordes tournament at Drexoll games on West 4th ave near Arbutus on Vancouver's West side.  This is a brief summary of the 4 games I played using 2 50 point Skorne lists detailed below.  The tournament was run by Douglas Duncan, a newish press ganger in the area who did a magnificent job and sacrificed not only his time to run the event but various donations for prizes as well (including an Army Transport bag and some models out of his own collection!).

The 2 lists I used were:

Dominar Rasheth tier 4 chain gang:
Rasheth +5
Bronzeback Titan -9
Titan Gladiator -7
Titan Sentry -8
Titan Sentry -8
Basilisk Krea -4
Gatorman Posse max -9
Paingiver Beasthandlers max -3
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew -1
Paingiver Taskmaster -2
Agonizer -2
Agonizer -2

Lord Arbiter Hexeris +6
Bronzeback Titan -10
Titan Gladiator -8
Titan Sentry -9 (bonded beast)
Basilisk Krea -4
Gatorman Posse max -9
Venator Rievers min -5
- Venator Riever Officer and Standard -2
Paingiver Beasthandlers min -2
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew -1
Paingiver Taskmaster -2
Extoller Soulward -2
Mortitheurge Willbreaker -2

Round 1: Opponent: Andrei (Khador) Caster: Sorcha 2
Sorcha 2
Conquest
Beast 09
Winterguard Infantry max
-Winterguard Infantry Officer and Standard
Great Bears
War Wagon
Kovnik Gregorovich
Sylis Wyshnalyr
Thank goodness he chose this list. His second list was a Butcher 3 list who I'm totally uncomfortable playing against because I've never had the opportunity to face him before nor do I like playing against infantry swarms (which was pretty much was his list was).  I ended up choosing Rasheth in the hopes that he would play Sorcha 2 because I have 2 agonizers that could shut down his jacks no problem as well as having 4 titans to deal with a colossal if need be.  The game basically came down to some poor terrain situations for my opponent because he had 2 huge bases that were hard to maneuver around the board.  I had a turn 2 charge on his battle engine with one of my sentries and LUCKILY didn't kill the thing.  This created choking problems with his bases and I got a nice breath of corruption off in the space where his winter guard pretty much HAD to advance through.  They advanced anyway for the Motherland and many a Khadoran did die in that noxious cloud.  The next turn I got the jump on his jacks with agonizers and suddenly wasn't afraid to advance in to threat range of them.  The gladiator charged the damaged battle engine to finish it so my sentry could charge Beast 09 and rip off his ice axe and take out his movement.  In his next turn he tried in vain to use Sorcha's feat to put some hurt on my titans but after Sorcha herself charged my bronzeback, she epicly missed all of her attack rolls!  What poor luck for her.  The great bears charged and did a ton of damage but failed to take out any of my elephants.  The next turn I got my gladiator to do a boosted headbutt on the iron flesh'd Sorcha who was then knocked down for my bronzeback to beat her into the dirt even further.  Assassination victory for Skorne.

Round 2: Opponent: Jeremy (Legion of Everblight) Warlock: Vayl 1
Vayl 1
Proteus
Carnivaen
Angelius
Succubus
Blackfrost Shard
Blighted Ogryn Warspears min
- Warspears Cheiftan
Blighted Ogryn Warmongers min
- Warmonger Chieftan??
Forsaken x2
Spell Martyr x2
I think my opponent may have made the wrong choice in lists here.  His second list was Saeryn which would have been scary but not unbeatable for Rasheth.  I took Rasheth again obviously, for he is such a great matchup for hordes factions in general with all his debuffs and feat stacking nicely against living models.  He caught me off guard a little with a spell martyr running up turn 2 to rampager one of my sentries way up the field and then shot the sentry with Proteus' dragging tentacles.  Through all the chaos and 2 beasts focusing on the sentry, my opponent's beasts failed to get the job done and left him with enough hitboxes to strike back in my next turn.  My next turn was pretty bad for my opponent, with my feat going off and gators charging his angelius at +2 strength from the taskmaster and taking it off the field.  I ran a gobber to a nice location and with one nicely placed breath of corruption killed his succubus and all 3 of the blackfrost shard! I rammed titans down his throat and hoped he couldn't deal with all the armor and hitboxes under -2 strength from Rasheth's feat and -2 to damage rolls from my double agonizers crying in the back.  In his next turn he feats and kills the damaged sentry but doesnt achieve much else.  His cat and mouse shenanigans leave vayl protected by her two remaining heavies.  In my next turn I killed his carnivaen who did not have spiny growth on him at this time and then decided the assassination on vayl was good to go but of course i forgot about dark sentinel... lol.  so after Proteus moved and took out the mind of my sentry attacking vayl i gave up on that and just killed Proteus instead.  I removed both his forsaken and all his warspears at this point with my krea scoring some objective points out of the action.  In his next turn he vainly tried to do some damage with vayl and 2 remaining warmongers but then called the game after his efforts were futile.  Skorne victory via.. Assassination I guess?

Round 3: Opponent: Zach (Circle of Orboros) Warlock: Kruegar 2
Kruegar 2
Ghetorix
Warpwolf Stalker
Gorax
Tharn Bloodtrackers max
-Nuala
Druids of Orboros max
-Overseer
Shifting Stones
-Stonekeeper
Shifting Stones
Blackclad Wayfarer
Viktor Pendrake
Gallows Grove x2
Oh boy.. I just played against this warlock in a practice game the night before but luckily that list had more heavies to contend with my beef than this list did.  I used Rasheth again, purely for his awesomeness against hordes and the fact that in general circle has trouble dealing with that much armor in many circumstances.  I was trying to be smart the first turn by arm locking my own beasts so he couldnt forcebolt them up the field but my sentries said NO GET OFF ME! and didnlt allow either of my open fist beasts to successfully lock them.. sigh.. so in Zach's 2nd turn he pulls the gladiator probably a net 10" upfield between forcebolts and telekinesis.  Ghetorix shifts with a unit of stones and starts a swingin at the gladiator.. and fails to kill him with 1 box.  And then Zach fails to kill the gladiator through various other attempts including spraying with the blackclad, charging with viktor pendrake (lol really!?!) and then forgetting to attack it with his bloodtrackers who instead shot at their prey target - the gators.  In my next turn I didn't get a whole lot accomplished other than killing pendrake and advancing upfield a bit.  I charged a druid with a sentry and managed to also engage Ghetorix doing some damage there as well.  Kruegar feats on his next turn and primals Ghetorix to do some damage to the sentry and kill the gladiator.  The stalker also comes in to try to beat on the sentry but fails to kill it.  Now i have a good opportunity to kill the stalker and not worry about ghetorix for a turn because he automatically frenzies.  I manage to make it in melee range of the stalker with 2 sentries even while being -2 SPD from kruegar's feat.  I kill the sentry and do some more general attrition by removing some infantry and moving farther upfield with titans.  Rasheth has feated in the turn previous to mitigate damage and both agonizers are still crying away at -2 damage rolls.  In his next turn he turns my titans around with telekinesis and kills an agonizer from a frenzy attack with Ghetorix.  Kruegar is in a vulnerable spot.  My last turn I enrage the bronzeback and the sentry and have rasheth throw Carnivore on the bronzeback (mat 9 bronzebacks dont miss!).  the bronzeback then tramples for free toward a druid, casts trainwreck on himself, kills the druid and moves an inch engaging the stonekeeper, kills him advancing an inch toward kruegar, and then proceeds to beat kruegar to the ground with a fury point to spare.  Skorne assassination victory.

Round 4: Opponent: Ralph (Menoth) Caster: Kreoss 2
Kreoss 2 Tier 4?
Fires of Salvation
Exemplar Errants max
-Exemplar Errants UA
Knights Exemplar
Knights Exemplar
Daughters of the Flame
Daughters of the Flame
Exemplar Bastions max?
Bastion Seneschal
Menoth Dragoon solo (forget the name I never see it)
Errant Seneschal
Wow.. what a swarm of dudes.  I chose Hexeris 2 naturally for both of my opponent's lists featured many an infantry model.  This game basically consisted of me backing up with most of my stuff while I cast ashes to ashses, black spot, and hellfire at his stuff.  I'll spare the details but the game came down to me having hexeris 2, my bronzeback, 1 venator reiver, my extoller, 3 paingivers, a taskmaster and my willbreaker.  I was down to 48 seconds left on my deathclock! My opponent was dominating a zone with nothing but kreoss 2 left on his side of the board.  I hastily ran hexeris at full camp on to an objective so i could dominate it, and then ran the bronzeback toward my opponent's destructible objective, and ran the 3 paingivers, the taskmaster, and the willbreaker toeing into the zone to score and prevent my opponent from dominating.  in Ralph's final turn, he had to dominate to win or I would win on control points the minute my turn started.  He managed to clear the infantry I had in the zone using every last point of his focus and dominated to win the game!  what an epic battle!  This game was probably the best game of warmachine I had played.

Results: After it was all counted up, Ralph came in 1st place due to the amount of control points he had scored throughout the day.  He had a total of 15 while I had 12.  He got to take home an awesome Army Transport carrying bag and I got a $40 gift certificate to Drexoll games.  The rest of the prizes were given away at random to the attendees of the tournament.  What an exhausting but fun day of Warmachine!  I'm looking forward to my next warmachine tournament at Strategies in the new year.

Immortal Brush Painting Challenge 2013

Immortal Brush Painting Challenge is an annual competition held at Strategies Games and Hobbies on Main and 23rd in Vancouver, BC.  It's a fun event that I always enter and have been quite successful in in the past.  I took the time to take some pictures of the highlights and winners of each of the 6 categories.  This year saw some truly awe inspiring entries, especially featured in the 'diorama' category.

Lets start with the best first, because I like to be different.


                           


What. The. Fuck.  This is absolutely incredible.  Not only is it well built, sculpted (yes the marine with the power first out front is almost all custom), but it's also well painted to boot - utilizing NMM and splendid blends to great effect.  If it's not at first obvious, this is a zero gravity diorama, with space marine corpses hovering instead of hitting the deck.  The blood splatter is epic, though my one critique about the whole thing is the small droplets of blood next to the chaos marine getting punched look a little like red pins on the floor but hey we get the picture.  This is based off of the book cover art from the Horus Heresy novel: Know No Fear.

 I think it was perfectly done!  If any readers could kindly pass me this gentleman's name that would be much appreciated because he definitely deserves some creds!

Onto Scifi Large.

 

 

This Leman Russ variant (can't recall which one it is) was done by the same fellow who did the epic diorama above.  This guy was just killing it!  He won best diorama, best scifi large, best customer vote, AND a door prize I believe.  Nice!  The tank was great and a really good choice for winner (beating Kelly Kim's Rhino tank and my Khorne Daemon Prince no less!!).  Big congratulations to this guy he really deserved it.  Would love to get his name next time. Shoot.

Scifi Squad.

These Sisters of Battle were done by Kelly Kim.  The classy guy that he is, Kelly almost always (from what I've seen) makes great use of display boards.  They can be simple, like this one, or thematic, like the one he used on his Rhino, but all push the models that little tad further to show that the modeler truly cares about the ground their models walk on!  Some nicely blended reds on these figures, as well as great facial features, a cool power sword and some free handed awesomeness on the banner.  Great job over all Kelly!

Small Scale Category.

Some nice German Panzers here.  I like the natural weathered look to them.  Again no name for this guy unfortunately.  Really, it's hard to make these models look any better than this guy did.  Nice job all around, well deserved win.

Fantasy Large.

This category was debatable on who I thought would've taken it.  The judges were talking about this Kraken that won, or a Nurgle Great Unclean One.  I thought the Great Unclean One was okay, and this Kraken was a bit better, but I also thought there were a couple other entries that were nicer than both of these.  A really nice LOTR Mordor Troll was in the case painted by Dave Clark (an old GW area manager) but I think had been entered already in a previous year at Immortal Brush.  I really liked the paint job on it, but the judge didn't.  It seems there are always incidents where perhaps personal preference comes in to play when judging and I think there may have been some of that here but theres no way to know for sure.  The Kraken was pretty good, probably winning because of the weathering and scenic basing, but as far as technical painting goes there were atleast 3 other entries that I felt deserved the win.  Either way, good job.

Fantasy Squad.

I saved the worst for last this time.  What the fuck again.  I think the judges were on crack for this one.  Maybe the slime and penises on these Bile Thralls really captured the judge's attentions but this is just plain table top quality in my opinion.  Did they not see my Bretonnian Knights?  I didn't really want to ask why these won, because I knew I wouldn't like the answer, and I don't really like bragging or defending my own models but seriously this was a little bit of a kick in the pants.  Perhaps the judges just don't like Bretonnians (maybe the color scheme isn't uniform enough? maybe my bases didn't have slime?) but my technical painting skill far surpassed these models.  The skulls look like they're painted Bleached Bone and washed with Devlan Mud.  The kaki colored bodies looked washed and drybrushed.  I really don't get it. 


Better luck next time for me, but there were some epic models here that I think everyone deserves to see.  Cheers.



Totem Hunter Commission

Total War: Rome 2 has been destroying my life.  Enough said.


On to things hobby related.  I got the wonderful opportunity to paint a Totem Hunter from the Minions faction of Hordes for none other than Trevor Christensen of the Warmachine/Hordes podcast: Chain Attack!  I'm a big fan of Chain Attack and frequently listen to their show when I paint.  I got the chance to meet Trevor, Jay and Scott this July past at Lock and Load in Seattle and now I've had the chance to paint something that Trevor will be using to "kick someone's dick in" with in games to come!

Their podcast: http://www.chain-attack.com/

Trevor was looking for a "custom" Totem Hunter.  This made me a bit uneasy as I'm not a confident conversion maker or re-poser.  After doing some research and figuring I decided I wanted him jumping off a cliff/rock/wall, using his spear horizontally for balance.  The default pose for Totem Hunter is a little awkward with him leaning forward a bit too much for my liking.   I was a little nervous about changing his arm position with the spear but I was satisfied with what I came up with.  It was pretty easy; pin the arm horizontally instead of vertically and green stuff some cloth wrapping to fill the gap.  The condition of the arm pieces where they join easily adapted to my vision. With the repose, he truly looks natural leaping off a ruined wall to smite his enemies!



When painting the Totem Hunter, I knew I wanted to have his skin color a little different.  I wanted free handed scales on the flat top of his head with a tawny skin tone overall.  His armor I decided to do teal (a color I rarely paint) with dark blue/blue gray for the scale armor. 

Unbeknownst to me this made a really great color contrast that I didn't expect.  It was a beautiful accident.  Something that helped smooth the colors over and give a nice matte appearance was multiple layers of mid-tone, thin glazes on both the skin and armor.

The metal trim was probably the most tedious part of the project all together and least enjoyable.  I went with a true metallic metal simply because Trevor's army was already painted with a true metallic, and the recipe for my gold NMM is a little too similar with the recipe for Totem Hunter's skin.

I'm pretty happy with the finished model and I really hope it gets to Trevor in one piece.  I probably took the most time out of any previous project to pack this thing safely, utilizing techniques that Trevor himself suggested: taping the model to the bottom of a small box, and wrapping it in bubble wrap - then putting the small box inside a larger box stuffed with packing peanuts and taped up tight.

Khorne Daemon Prince (40k)

It's been a long while since I've painted anything 40k for various reasons.  Firstly, I'm really not happy with the state of the game, mostly because of the crappy book that Chaos Space Marines were dealt (all those Word Bearer CSM with Rhinos I painted won't be used now that Cultists are an option and CSM have to pay for things they used to have  for free- like a chainsword for example, and not being able to charge after disembarking from a Rhino).  Until I actually play in a tournament for 40k I'm under the impression the game is quite dull with most strategy being revolved around list construction, how many long range high strength guns you have, picking what to shoot at, and massing cheap troop choices to claim those objectives.  The game is less about positioning and tactics (being very forgiving in this department, especially if you have a 48" range gun!) and more about just rolling lots of fucking dice and killing space marines.  Close combat got nerfed hard, now when my CSM try to charge something they get shot up first and 3+ saves just dont cut it with all the AP3 or high volume of shots coming at you.  Blah!

All that being said, I felt it's time to start painting my 'new' CSM army a bit.  I started with one of the new plastic Daemon Princes that I've included in my list.  He's got the Mark of Khorne, power armor, wings, and the Axe of Blind Fury.  This gives him a whack load of attacks at Str 7 AP2 and he's quite hard to hit while flying.

The model is great.  I really like the wings and the axe is pretty cool.  The one thing I was definitely not pleased was with the heads.  They all look goofy to me; the teeth are just atrocious on every single one of them.  I had to do something about that.  I decided he needed a faceplate to cover up his lack of braces when he was a child and made him a metal 'beard' out of some chains and a skull I had lying in my bits box.  You'll never guess the piece I made the faceplate out of - it's the optional back of the cowl from the Empire Battle Wizards box set.  It just so happened it was the piece in my bits box that perfectly fit around his ugly face, and painted right would look the part too.  I sculpted some straps that are barely noticeable anyways just so if anyone cares to look for the detail they can see the mask isn't just suspended in mid air over his face.

I started painting him the usual World Eaters red scheme.  After completing the red I really took a long time getting inspired to further progress with the model.  I think the wings were intimidating me with such a large surface area needing to be highlighted up to a bone color from a dark brown.  This took quite some time and was really putting me off.  With the deadline for a competition looming, I knew I had to bite the bullet and force myself to sit down and focus.  I sporadically worked on different areas, base coating some while doing the first few layers on others and eventually I got the idea of how things were shaping up and what the final product would eventually look like.   This was the drive I needed; in one fell swoop I finished the NMM gold and the wings all at once!  I completed the black details and the steel NMM the next day.  Static grass was added.  Hopefully Kelly Kim hasn't entered anything in the same category or else I may have some stiff competition!

From the front, I really was happy with the angles and direction I chose for the light on the armor.

Again, a nice angle to check out the gold bracers. 

Probably my favorite part of this piece, the axe worked out really well for me.

The wings were a source of discomfort in my mind.  I originally wanted to add scales similar to that of the Timor dragon I painted for AGM, but decided the surface area was big - but not big enough to warrant individual scales.  I thought it may clutter the model and look too busy.

First Attempt at YouTube Battle Reports

I'm a huge fan of watching battle reports on youtube.  My kind of battle reports are ones that are tactically motivated games between two competitive lists with nicely painted armies.  These could range from Warmachine to Warhammer Fantasy or from Warcraft 3 to Starcraft 2, as long as you could learn something from watching the games.  If I'm to watch tabletop wargames battle reports, I prefer to either watch a well-known competitive player or games straight of a tournament themselves.  The reason being is (somewhat obviously) most people take the best shit they can in competitive matches and watching them is how you learn to defeat them. 

I decided after watching various inspiring YouTubers all the time that I'd try my hand at making a report as well.  Having this channel leads to much more than just battle reports but to painting tutorials or showcases that I'd be interested in exploring at a later time.  If everything works out as I hope it will, there will be tons of content from (hopefully) many different sources other than myself about gaming, painting, and hobbying as a whole.

My first report is the first game that I played at Wet Coast GT 2013 against Peter Davis and his Lizardmen.  Unfortunately it was a loss for me, but my opponent is probably one of the best WFB players in the area so much could be learned from him.  There are still plenty of things to work on for my videos such as taking better and more detailed pictures, going over deployment, initial thoughts of the game, army lists, scenarios, and even pictures of the painted armies.  I'll be keeping all these things in mind for future reports. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p7I3TR67WA

Hope you enjoy, if WFB isn't your thing, there will be plenty of WM/H games to come I'm sure. 

Timor

This will have been the 2nd dragon I've painted for Action Games Miniatures' Drake game.  The Timor dragon of the Mountain Lords (formerly Garrick) faction is a monstrous mass of flesh, muscle and bad attitude.  While not as physically large as the Garrick dragon himself, the Timor is no less fierce in melee and damage potential.

The model I received to paint was one of the first run test casts for the Timor, and therefore was an off-colored white resin cast.  The gaps and mold lines weren't perfect in these earlier runs but I did my best to cover them up.  I'm really not great with green stuff and putty etc but thats a topic I'm thinking about writing a separate blog post about.

The model is really open for an artist's interpretation.  It has wonderfully sculpted smooth surface areas of muscle and wing tissue with some minor detailed spines on the back of the neck progressing into larger spikes down the back ending in a clubbed, stegosaurus type tail.  The face features some spines jutting from the cheeks and ram's horns curling forward.  After a brief color scheme talk with Ben, AGM's director, I decided I wanted to have a pretty simple 'backdrop' to the flesh of this model done exclusively with the airbrush with free handed, brushed on scales in various places that draw the eye to key points of the model and break up the monotony of the smooth airbrushed flesh.

I started by priming the model Army Painter's grey primer.  I then applied VMA Light Brown to the entire model except the horns, spines, and  base.  I then shaded the model with VMA Medium Brown until satisfied with the results.  I went back with VMA Light Brown to hit key areas I wanted to be lighter.  Simple!

Now on to the fun part.  I started with P3's Umbral Umber and 'penciled' in where I wanted all the scales to be.  I focused on areas around the existing, pre sculpted scales on the back of the dragon's neck, shoulders, thighs, head, wings, and back.  This took quite a while as you can imagine, especially considering I did about 5 layers on EACH scale.  The finished product is quite something though.

I slowly shaded every scale starting with pure P3 Sanguine Base followed by pure P3 Skorne Red followed by pure P3 Khador Red followed by pure P3 Khador Red Highlight.  I found that with such a small area to work on like an individual scale you don't necessarily need to do any separate stages in between pre manufactured colors, so no mixing involved. 

It was about this time when I had an epic brush fail x2.  I recently decided to crack open a new GW brush because after finishing my Empire army I wanted to throw away my previous brush that I'd contaminated with metallic colors used on armor plates.  However, the brush I opened was horribly frayed and would NOT shape back together to my annoyance.  I decided to put it aside for now as time was a factor and I opened a 2nd brush I had sitting around.   This brush ALSO had the same problem.  I'm wondering if the factory forgot to put on the gum arabic to shape the bristles or what.  Not having any gum arabic lying around at home to use, I had to head to DeSerres and ended up spending a bunch of money on a Windsor & Newton brush.  I really forgot how awesome those brushes truly are.. so impressed.  It seems before I took them for granted.

At this stage, I was debating painting the horns the traditional bone color but thought it may be too similar to the skin tone so I went with a stark contrasting black highlighted up with P3 Coal Black and P3 Trollblood Base.  Simple yet effective.  As for the base of the model, it has some nicely sculpted rocky areas and some areas that are assumed to be dirt.  I did a couple layers of drybrushing greys and browns and ended up with something I felt was dusty and natural enough.  Some premade static grass clumps from army painter were added and 'she' was done!  I had to quickly take pictures in my crappy little light box before one of Ben's men came to pick it up for photographing.  It was nice knowing you Timor!  By the way this model is fucking HUGE!  Airbrushes are definitely suggested.

My next project is for a friend.  It's a Dwarf King on Bear from Scibor miniatures.  Pretty excited to paint this as its a pure awesome model and it'll mean back to NMM for a bit hurray!

Wet Coast GT 2013

Just finished playing at Wet Coast this weekend and what a time it was!  I'll do a very brief overview of my games and summary of the event overall.  I will, however, first say that I won a 'medal' for best Empire General (out of 2 players YEAAAHH!!) and a $25 gift certificate to Imperial Hobbies through a raffle draw.

Game 1:  My opponent was Peter Davis from Chop with Lizardmen.  I liked his conversions he did for his army, some of which included some funny googly eyed chameleon skinks and saurus in the middle of bringing down some bretonnian knights of the realm.  His army wasn't too scary as far as Lizardmen armies go, with the worst part of it being 2 scar veteran heroes and 2 slann magepriests with one having the becalming cogitation (opponents discard 6's when casting spells) and the ability to gain a 'free' dice for casting a spell.  The game really came down to one scar vet walking through my entire artillery line at the back, and his 2 slann sitting in a building becoming virtually untouchable.  I beat up his army pretty bad, and forced him to flee with most of it, but unfortunately I just couldn't roll high enough to catch him in most situations and didn't manage to take off as many points as I would've liked.  I feel I did a lot better than the points tally showed at the end.  Loss for me game 1.

Game 2:  My opponent was Iain Edgar also from Chop with his Dwarfs.  Iain was a brilliant opponent to play against and such a good sport, he got my favorite opponent vote.  His army only had a couple warmachines, yet he had an anvil of doom which really is hard to predict.  I basically played the fleeing and setting up to shoot the piss out of his army type game and actually ended up tabling him in the end.  He did get my steam tank though with his slayers.  Win for the Empire.

Game 3: My opponent was *Ryan* McKinnon from Vancouver Island's "Greenskin Nation" gaming club.  He was one of the 9/33 players that brought Warriors of Chaos.  I felt horrible in this game because turn 1 I cannoned off his level 4 daemon prince.  however, similar to a common theme during this tournament, even when a couple tough melee units got through my guns they managed to wipe through a warmachine or two and an engineer in the process.   My opponent conceded after one of his Slaanesh Warrior units was obliterated off the table by a nice round of volleygun fire.  No harm no foul there.  Empire Win.

Game 4: My opponent was Andrew Muirhead with his Ogres.  Andrew and I actually played a practice game with our exact same lists a couple weeks prior to the event so we knew how the game played out pretty much.   It didn't go well for the Ogres but was probably better than the first time we played.  I ended up tabling him as well, only suffering the loss of a cannon to a misfire, a unit of chaff knights to a maneater unit, and a helblaster volleygun and my archers were taken off from a couple rounds of combined leadbelcher and ironblaster fire.  My steam tank managed to get into his big horde of ogre bulls and held them up until demigryphs could charge their REAR.  bad news for ogres.  Empire win. (poor Andrew, I don't think he likes playing me haha)

Game 5: My opponent was Alex Harris with his Orcs and Goblins.  This guy was a real 'joy' to play against.  Starting off by taking a march move back after going through dangerous terrain with his wolf rider chaff unit and rolling 3/5 1's for his DT tests, he decided he didn't want to move AFTER the result...  I let it go because I don't enjoy making a scene or calling people out on rules (although sometimes I should stick to my guns and call people out).  The game progressed and I cannoned off a couple stone throwers and killed some chaff wolves etc and basically the entire time he was bitching and whining about how awesome my dice were and how broken my shit was... really not fun at all.  He was complaining about every 'horrible (horribly average) ' roll he was making and every 'good' roll I was making.  He killed my steam tank, he basically walked through my entire army yet still I could not get an ounce of cheer from this man.  Really lame sauce.  After fighting a unit of his trolls with my demigryph knights, getting 9 wounds in total, and him passing 8!!!! out of 9 of his 4+ regens, I thought this would be the last time he complained about how awesome my dice were.. yet nope!!! He kept wanking off about how everything sucked and at this point I tossed him my hand to shake and say GG because I was fed up with how he was acting.  I told him I really didn't enjoy the game and all his whining (even though he was still winning).  Normally I don't mind a bit of complaining but this guy was just an asshole about it.  I have no shame in saying it was my least enjoyable moment from the weekend and I hope I don't end up drawing him as an opponent in future tournaments but you're always going to run into people like this I suppose.  Loss for me (and too bad the event had to end on that note!)

Summary:  I went 3-2 which I'm pretty happy with, coming in 15th place after everything was added up which is in the top half of the field.  The tournament itself was very well run by a fellow named Dan Miner who frequently does these kinds of events.  He's a great guy who really does us all a great service in organizing these tournaments.  There were TONS of prizes to be raffled off so it seemed everyone got something which was also great.  There was one bit of drama that happened between a couple players (someone walking away from a game angry) that I won't go into but nothing else major as far as I heard.  I'll be signing up next year and if you're in the Vancouver area and play Warmachine, Hordes, Malifaux, Flames of War, 40k, or Fantasy I suggest signing up as well as the event now hosts all those systems.

1500 PTS Premier Tournament @ GW Highgate

Today I had a sort of warm up for WGT coming up in a couple weeks.  I tried out a 1500 pt Empire list for WFB at the local GW (somewhere I haven't been gaming in ages).  My main game being warmachine, many of my opponents from that game DESPISE GW stuff.  I think it's a bitter attitude (one that I once shared at a time) for people who believe they've been slighted by GW.  If you look past all the bullshit GW constantly does, which is sometimes hard to do, you can see a light hearted game with great looking models and most of all pretty awesome and fun people who play (WFB at least.. 40k night probably smells bad haha).

Almost finished all 8 Demigryphs.  These guys did more scaring people with their bark than actually destroying them with their bite!  They look scary!!!

I wanted to use some of the Demigryphs I've recently painted so that was a must.  I also wanted to practice redirecting and fleeing more, so I took a small group of Knightly Orders with musician to help out with that.  I took some guns to shoot stuff dead and a Celestial Wizard Level 4 to improve their damage output with the Harmonic Convergence spell.

General: Celestial Wizard Level 4, Earthing Rod
Battle Standard Bearer Captain, Standard of Discipline, Full Plate Armor, Shield
Master Engineer, Light Armor (I had 1 point leftover)
Master Engineer

Halberdiers x32, Full Command Group
Detachment Archers x5
Knightly Orders x5, Musician

Demigryph Knights x5, Musician
Great Cannon

Helblaster Volleygun
Helblaster Volleygun

Game 1:  I faced off against my good buddy Kiel! Who ta thunk?  I signed up for a tournament to face someone I regularly play. The scenario was Blood and Glory, leaving me with 4 fortitude points and Kiel had 5 I think.  Kiel brought Beastmen with notable threats being a Cygor, a horde of Gor with two hand weapons and a couple characters inside, 1 being a BSB and 1 being a level 3 bray shaman on lore of Beasts, and a big block of 25-30 Bestigor with great weapons.  It turned out there was a huge piece of area terrain in the middle of the damn table that meant Kiel's force wasn't going to be steadfast in combat (though i dont want them to be there!) but also meant I was at a -1 to hit modifier with all my guns.  The short of it was I spent a couple turns shooting his stuff, taking off the Cygor turn 1 with a single cannon shot, and mowing down about half of the Gor with helblasters.  There was a turn where my knights were in the rear of his Gor, my block of halberds in the flank, and my poor helblasters in front.  This ended up with me eventually grinding him out, breaking him, and winning then and there with more than half his fortitude destroyed in 1 unit.  The DGK also had a bit of fun breaking the bestigor who were out of BSB range, and had also failed their hatred check.  I didn't end up catching them, however, though it did not matter.  Empire victory.

Game 2: I faced a dwarf opponent who was named Tanner if i recall correctly.  The scenario was Battle Line.  I was really hoping not to face either of the dwarf players, as I knew it would be a 'cannon-off' and fortune would favor whoever didn't roll 1's and misfires.  Tanner's army had a LOT of scary guns: a grudge thrower, an organ gun, and 2 cannons (1 was flaming).  He also had a horde of dwarf warriors with great weapons and a BSB hiding inside, 10 thunderers, and another 25 man block of dwarf warriors with his general.  Tanner finished deploying first, most things camping the corner in true dwarfy fashion, but I still managed to win the roll off for first turn even with his additional +1 to the roll.  This pretty much set the pace of the game from the start.  My cannon took out his organ gun, the main threat to my demigryphs, while my helbasters advanced up in to range (I actually forgot but my gracious opponent let me move them after the fact!).  My knights marched off toward a cannon that eventually killed itself with a misfire before i got the chance to get to grips with it, and my demigryphs were actually successfully baited toward the bearer of the Rune of Challenge.  Tanner's general was holding that rune, and really caught me out.  I ended up failing a BAD charge putting me in a horrible position that was in direct cannoning line straight through all the demigryphs.  luckily Tanner's dice hated him this game and he only managed to hit and kill 1 with the ensuing cannonball.  after a couple more rounds of helblasters in the face and chain lightning bouncing between his units, all he had left was his horde and Tanner, unsurprisingly and unashamedly conceded the game.  It's never fun getting beat up when there's really no hope anyways, at that point it would just be me rolling dice.  It was quite the kicking and I felt kinda bad. I really enjoyed Tanner and would definitely play him again in a deserved rematch.  Empire Victory.

Game 3:  This was up against Allen's Vampires.  Allen had a metric ass ton of models in this list, with the biggest threats being a vampire general in a block of 30 or so graveguard, 2 units of ethereal fast cav, and a tomb banshee.  we were playing battle for the pass which i thought was going to give me a huge advantage, my army being shooty and all.  However, I had NO idea that the ethereal fast cav were indeed fast cav, and therefore could vanguard.  I had a +1 for the roll for first turn yet still failed.  This was boding ill.  Allen vanguarded directly in my face with stuff 99% of my army cant hurt! awesome! During my turn, I looked at it and figured I could probably charge the close unit of ethereal cav and beat them out on combat res alone.  They don't have many attacks, with 1 apiece, and there were only 5 of them.  After shooting some graveguard and crypt ghouls with helblasters and cannoning off a few more graveguard, i charged in with my halberdiers and my archers also had to charge just to get out of the way.  luckily for me,   his cav didnt do a SINGLE wound, and I managed to wipe them completely due to combat res.  Allen's next turn saw the beginning of a horrible spell haunting me the entire game: Curse of Years on the Halberdiers.  I couldnt dispel it in his magic phase, nor my own magic phase, and finally in his NEXT turn I got rid of it. My knightly orders fled a charge from crypt ghouls after beating up some dire wolves, and that flee reaction panicked my DGK, almost sending them off the board!  The game came down to my halberdiers grinding out a big unit of zombies with the banshee inside, my helblasters almost tabling the graveguard from persistent shooting, his vampire walking through the helbasters, and my DGK destroying the graveguard and getting the vampire down to a single wound.  We were the last to finish, and counting up VPs, I had won!  Allen was another excellent opponent and good sport and there was really no whining or complaining the entire day (probably because I won all 3 games, I'm the biggest whiner after all!).  Empire Victory!

I had tons of fun and would like to thank the staff at GW Highgate for running the event. I think the overall consensus was that it was a  fun event with no real problems.  my friend Kiel ended up winning on sportsmanship/soft score.  He went 1-2! Congrats Kiel, people love you apparently!! I gave Kiel my best sportsmanship vote, as well as a vote for best painted, alongside Jonathan's excellently painted vampire army.   Kiel is really good for taking a dick kicking and still keeping in good spirits (for the most part =P) and is just generally a fun and funny opponent to have a game with.  2nd place goes to both Jonathan and I.  Yay us!  I've already signed up for their next tournament, which will be 2000 points sometime in November most likely.

More figs for Drake and some random Hordes games

I've been busy painting some more figs for AGM (Drake the Dragon Wargame!).  These bad boys are Cherek warriors (or possibly hunters?).  They serve the mighty Garrick - the largest dragons of Dara.  They are mostly a tribal people and as far as I know lack cities in proper but tend to gather in small villages in the mountains.  They are ab humans, tall and lanky and have a decent fighting skill that is matched at range as much as it is in melee.

 For these guys I somewhat followed a previous scheme that was used to paint other studio figures but decided to spice it up a bit with some interesting patterns on the cloth hanging at their waists.  I was originally thinking Zebra-like patterns but chickened out and went more of an antelope style instead with black lines in various spots.  The zebra idea may be something to try on a different batch.  Since these guys are somewhat primal it gives me an excuse to google animal skins etc to draw inspiration from. 

Another thing this project gave me an opportunity to practice is darker skin tones.  I pretty much followed a tutorial I saw a while back on Bell of Lost Souls found here.  However, I wanted to emphasize the darkness of their skin (is this sounding racist?!) and only applied highlights sparingly whereas in the tutorial the artist seems to have exaggerated the lighter colors more.  I really like how it turned out and plan on using this skin tone for various Circle of Orboros models (Tharn in particular) at a later date.

As for the models themselves, they are a work in progress.  There will, of course, be additional poses coming but this is the prototype for multipart infantry.  These 4, as opposed to their original renditions that are already painted and on AGM's website, videos, etc, are not a single piece; the arms are pose-able!  I tried to showcase this as best as possible, but it's still a relatively static pose.  Look forward to more variation in the future!  They are well sculpted though and I'm really digging the 'true scale.'  I like the ridges on their heads, and the definition of their lanky but muscular frame in particular.

 

I've been stepping up my Warmachine game lately, and trying to practice more at The Connections against good players.  Even though I'll most likely get stomped, I'm always learning from my mistakes.  I've had a couple frustrating losses lately where I was clearly in the winning position but either my dice failed me or I got assassinated in an 'all in' goofy matter.  All that aside, I have been winning against various opponents at Connections that I've constantly lost to in the past, so that's saying something about my skills improving.  I'm focusing on 2 lists in particular that I'll hopefully be taking to a tournament at Connections sometime.  They are as follows:

Archdomina Makeda (Makeda 1)
Molik Karn
Archidon
Bronzeback Titan
Titan Gladiator
Aptimus Marketh
Nihilators max
Paingiver Beasthandlers min
Agonizer
Extoller Soulward
Mortitheurge Willbreaker

Dominar Rasheth (Tier 4 Chain Gang)
Titan Gladiator
Titan Gladiator
Titan Sentry
Bronzeback Titan
Gatorman Posse max
Venator Slingers max
Paingiver Beasthandlers min
Swamp Gobber Bellows Crew
Agonizer
Agonizer
Paingiver Taskmaster

Here are some random pictures of some games I've played lately:

This game was at Strategies Games.  Practicing Makeda 1

This was a game I played (today actually) at The Connections.  This was an enjoyable game in large part due to my gracious opponent and his nicely painted army (a rarity at The Connections)

Now back to those Demigryph Knights...

Empire Army and WetCoast GT update!

For those 4 people that follow me (lol) you may have seen one of my first posts about an Empire army for warhammer fantasy that I had to work on for a tournament coming up... well that tournament is next month and I have actually signed up for an ADDITIONAL tournament even earlier (less than 2 weeks?) that also has a painting requirement.  Luckily it's not as many points therefore not requiring as many painted models, but still what a good inspiration to get my shit done.  I took a bunch of quick photos of the progress i've been getting, and it's coming together quite nicely although I haven't spent as much time on individual models as some of my privateer press stuff but thats to be expected of GW systems requiring tons of figs.  The pics are pretty bad and taken quickly but there will be better ones coming when everything is complete.

 I'm currently working on my demigryph knights.  these models are soooooooooo cool.  when the new empire stuff came out I bought 2 boxes of these guys directly.  I didnt see the rules for them until after the fact, but thankfully they are ridiculously good anyways, not to mention with the latest errata of the 8th ed fantasy rules, they are now T4!

A group shot of all the demigryphs.  I'm having fun painting the red armor.  These demigryphs dont follow the same scheme as the rest of my army as they are a detachment of the Knights Griffon knightly order (red and gold).

 I have 2 units of knightly orders, this one I've airbrushed the horses white with smokey extremities and muzzles.  I'm quite pleased with the result. 

Similar to my demigryphs, these knights don't match the rest of my Nordland army because they are a detachment of the Knights Panther knightly order.  Ever since I was a child and looked at pictures of Empire knights, I always loved the Knights Panther the best.  Finally I get to have my own!  These will be the last things I complete probably.  With under a month to go, we'll see how I can do!!!

 I completed this last night actually.  My trusty BSB.  Carrying the standard of discipline, this guy will ensure (hopefully) that none of the Empire's brave soldiers flee in the wake of the enemy!  I decided to do something different with the grim reaper other than the typical black, and I wanted the colors to be different than my blue/bone scheme so I went with red, off red, and blue/black.  meh haha

 A small detachment of halberdiers to hide all my pathetic human characters in.. hopefully this unit will never see combat.  I used army painter's quickshade for these guys.  pretty simple and took barely any time at all.  I suggest a tricky method like this for any huge block of infantry.. in particular core infantry. you just base the model with a bright color for each different surface, dunk em in the quickshade, wipe off the excess quickshade, and matte varnish.

 Celestial Wizard. 

 I wanted to do a star pattern on the back of his cape, and I made it into a somewhat half assed constellation of the Heaven's Magic Lore symbol.  Maybe hard to visualize with this crappy picture.

 Bright Wizard. 

 I realized I did the flames backwards to what I had originally intended.  Usually I paint the brightest part of the flame in the recesses but i think it works this way as well.  I totally spaced on that.

 I've had this old faithful warrior priest painted for many years already.  At one point, I was even trying to sell him :O!! Good thing nobody wanted it.  This is my general, he does NOT have a great weapon.  Hopefully nobody is going to whine over him not being entirely WYSIWYG

 A tray of halberdiers.  this is a block of 40 (39) that will be the anvil.  actually I hope they will never see combat either hah

 I'm really happy with this steam tank.  I painted it in TWO days I was that excited while working on it.  it has been a LONG time since I've drybrushed any metallics, and I gotta say it was damn fun.  When drybrushing ANYTHING I try to paint in small, circular patterns.  This gives a weathered look and ensures all angles are hit with paint evenly, instead of just hitting it from one or two directions.   This guy is my true anvil and he will Bline it directly into the enemy's fightiest combat unit.

Some more halberds, cannon crew, archers, helblaster crew, etc.

And.. my trusty engineers.  These guys will be ensuring my artillery doesn't completely fail me.